“He has over a dozen such videos of him getting confronted by the Oregon police while he carries his AR-15 .”

It gets better. He describes himself thusly:

“I am a Constitutional guardian and activist, at the same time a Libertarian that will defend the Individual rights of Life, Liberty, and Property against Tyrannical and Collectivism. I am a Oregonian, but support the separation of Oregon to create the state of Jefferson. In the state of Jefferson we will make a new Constitution that resemble the USA Constitution, but with more Individual rights with a dictionary that describe the meaning of the Constitution. I am also a extreme Firearms, Freedom of Speech, and Property Activist”

Listening to this guy’s words makes it obvious that he is semi-literate, defiant and an all-around embarrassment to the gun rights movement. Eventually, one of his infantile stunts will get someone killed, and all responsible gun owners will be lumped in with this assclown.

I am not sure that a comparison to the “occupy” movement is valid. That particular circle of the Venn diagram has 100% overlap with the “lazy idiot” circle. When it comes to open carry, the % of jerks trying to draw attention to themselves and cause confrontations is lower (but still higher than it ought to be, in my opinion).

If the guy in those videos wasn’t so combative and illiterate, I might be more forgiving of his style of open carry.

But he is a bumbling yahoo who is deliberately trying to provoke confrontations. At the moment, he is just an embarrassment to the rest of the gun community, a stereotype that antigunners will point to as proof that gun people are unreasonable.

But eventually this jackhole’s behavior will get someone hurt or killed. And then the calls to ban open carry will get both louder and more persuasive.

My position is that we should keep making progress on winning the undecideds in the middle. The way to accomplish that is twofold: to be calm and responsible gun owners, and to deny the antigunners anything that they can use against us.

I can see where you get the idea that there’s a comparison, but not really. Consider that my good friend Gunnutmegger backed up his reasoning with facts. You may not like them, but it wasn’t simply a blanket statement.